From Russian to Wikileaks: Outside Interference in the US Election

The 2016 Presidential Election has been one of the most tumultuous elections in US history. The candidates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are quite possibly the two most polarizing candidates ever. However, this is not the only reason this election has been turbulent. This year appears to have an unprecedented level of outside inference in the election.

The most notable interference is aimed at the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”) from both Wikileaks and suspected Russian hackers. Before the Democratic National Convention in July, a Russian hacker group, Guccifer 2.0, released emails from the DNC that proved that there was a clear bias for Clinton over then nominee, Senator Bernie Sanders. This revelation led to the resignation of chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz. More recently, the United States has officially stated that it believes that Russia is behind the release of that information. The Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement confirming Russian involvement. Moreover, some states have reported that hacks against their election systems originated from Russia. Putin emphatically denied Russian involvement in these hacks.

Furthermore, Wikileaks is apparently interfering in the U.S. election. In the most recent release of emails from Wikileaks, emails from Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, were released. These emails seemed to signal that there were communications between the DNC and the Clinton campaign about debates in the primaries. Wikileaks also released the transcripts of Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs. This Sunday, Wikileaks tweeted that it would be releasing another round of its election coverage. 

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, now is facing backlash from Ecuador – the country currently providing him asylum in their London Embassy. Ecuador announced that it was temporarily cutting off Assange’s internet connection due to concerns that Ecuador might be drawn into the U.S. election. They did make clear that they were not preventing Wikileaks from publishing new material. Assange originally sought asylum from Sweden who is still attempting to prosecute him for rape – Assange claimed that it was actually an attempt by America to extradite him. Moreover, Assange is facing criticism that him and Wikileaks are pro-Trump - they deny this accusation. Wikileaks also faced criticism that it works for the Kremlin.

Recent polls suggest that the recent data dump has not done much to damage Clinton’s standing in the polls. However, it is still problematic that a state-actor and a major organization, possibly supported by a state actor, are interfering in a U.S. election.

On the other side, Trump appears to be communicating with a Russian server according to a group of computer scientists. This group began looking into whether Russian servers were attempting to attack the GOP and Trump campaign, like the DNC and Clinton. By tracking domain name system (DNS) databases, these scientists realized that a Trump server and an server belonging to Alfa Bank (which has ties to Putin, Ukraine, and Russia) were communicating. Further, these scientists realized that this server was handling a suspiciously low amount of traffic. Moreover, the server was set up to communicate with a few select IP addresses. While these scientists grew more and more suspicious, the Trump campaign’s policies began to appear more and more Russian friendly. In fact, around this time, Trump called for Russia to “find” Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. The communication between the two servers also increased during important times in the election season, like the conventions. Suddenly, when the New York Times began to question Alfa Bank about the communications, the server shut down. Four days later, the communication began anew with a new host name. Now, the Slate article makes clear that all this evidence does not guarantee that there is in fact communication is occurring, however it certainly offers “a preponderance of evidence” that something weird is happening.

It will be interesting to see how the last week of this election season plays out and if any other cyber bombshells drop before the peoples’ final ballots are cast.